Seib & Wessel: Obama's Transparency Problem

8/23/2013 11:09AM

WSJ's Siobhan Gorman on President Obama's promise of more transparency on surveillance means we are learning often unflattering details. Disclosures highlight how Obama's administration didn't live up to his campaign promises of eschewing secrecy.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

the ... yes ... partially for the NSA National Security Agency the ... sun doesn't send emails to his people about to using chemical weapons but ... the NSA is just this relentless story here ... I was the president deal with the fact that just seems every week you in your colleagues find something else that gets people civil libertarians blood ... well ... he's he's trying to respond to making this big push for transparency in lovely site yesterday was ... up over the biggest effort yet on the part of the administration to put out ... information about how the surveillance programs that and and what they put out yesterday was not flattering at all I can show that for a three-year period the NSA had ... violated the Constitution it had collected ... tens of thousands of purely domestic ... communications between Americans and ... not only that but the of the vaunted Pfizer court which is a secret surveillance court that oversees this whole process ... was outraged at the fact that the administration had allowed this to go on for three years and had not sufficiently thought ... I'd either Alter Technology or processes to better protect ... so far it's getting worse ... definitely ... well because if you look at ... the at about mile when an apparent for five years and when you ... go back to his early days as ... the AGNC ASEAN ... Association policies was such a big ... plank and has a four man who was a lot of reasons why ... people supported him in two thousand ate and ... ate then come and office declaring to be the most transparent administration in history ... that when you make a statement like that it's bound to catch up with you and ... and said now there is that all discussions about government secrecy and its Committee on his watch and his Legacy whether it likes ... and you don't hear them say that Mr. her estranged sister in law ... but the transparencies their question about checks and balances and even the president seems to think there were ... enough checks and Congress doesn't think the reason I felt so so ... it does seem like you will get at least one putts on on Capitol Hill when lawmakers come back in September ... to find ways to bolster ... its secret surveillance Court process because right now ... basically the government insurance it's that exchanges with ... a judge or judges on the port ... and a sort of reach accommodation about how the court order I'm that that Guineans day and in those cases helping patients providers aam or or or similar companies ... provide information to the NSA ... I've that it's it's it's it's basically a one sided discussion and so what are the main things that they're they're discussing and the president said that he was interested in looking at is whether or not ... you can add some sort of outside havoc for privacy ... that probably won't completely alter the structure of the ongoing programs that much but it will give a voice for privacy advocates